Anyone touch up clearcoated alum. wheels before?

These are the wheels that I'm tossing on my car soon-





The bottom two are the worst. The one with the weight on it (wtf?) is slightly more dull than the rest, the upper right one has one mark on the entire wheel basically. The bottom left has the most curb rash (it's around the lower right side in the pic), and the bottom right has some of those spots of corrosion on it.

I was planning on powdercoating them, but I think I'm just going to leave them alone. I don't have the money for that right now and I'm scraping it together as-is just to get tires on these wheels for the summertime.

Has anyone ever touched up clearcoat on a wheel before? I might be able to make the curb rash better to non-existent with my Dremel.
It almost seems like I could make the bad one look half decent by sanding off the corrosion spots with the grain of the machining, then just touching the clearcoat up, before wetsanding and polishing them. I don't care if it's not perfect, plus I'll be going over all of these with polish and my Powerball anyways.

FWIW I don't even think they look that bad right now, and once there are some center caps on there they will look more than just decent. Some kind of weird brown goo had spilled all over these, and I just killed myself getting it all off.

wet sand those spots to get the rust off and the area smooth with 400 and 600 grit. Try to keep the strokes going with the machining. You may have to experiment with different grits to hide the work. Then wipe down with wax and grease remover until the rag is clean after wipe. Finish with duplicolor's clear wheel paint. Word of caution. After shaking can, let it sit a few minutes or it will come out hazy due to bubbles in the paint.

I sanded down the bad spots with 400 and 800ish since I didn't have any 600...I also ground down and smoothed out the curb rash the best I could, can't replace the metal by sanding, but didn't look bad. Figured I didn't have much to lose. I'll try painting it tomorrow.

Still not sure if I should just lightly sand the whole wheel and paint it or just the spots...

Or you could always strip the clear off all the wheels and polish them.

toomanytoyz wrote:

Or you could always strip the clear off all the wheels and polish them.

I considered that, I don't know if I feel like going through the trouble though, plus I like the metallic painted sections. hahaha